Magic is a game of skill, but which involves a bit of luck. To have a decent openening hand, to not flood out, to be able to play your spells, etc.
Winning against an opponent who's mana-screwed the whole game feels empty. And getting beat when you're mana flooded is no more fun.
You could argue that the Pro Tour is usually decided by luck - sometimes, one deck is clearly above others, most of the time, there's a balance in the format. Sam Black had to mulligan down to 4, Pardee had a ~decent hand but no board presence whatsoever in the first 4 turns, and it was still a massacre.
Idea #1: For openeing hand, keep 7 out the top 15, then shuffle the rest. Scry X during your draw step (X=2 or 3 - i.e you get a free Sylvan Library, without the ability to PsiBlast yourself to get more cards), and reveal the card you're drawing every turn (ok maybe not, at that point counterspell would be dead... which may not be a bad thing after all)
Idea #2: make distinct piles of cards: 1 pile for lands, 1 pile for non-lands. Draw from whichever pile you want any time you would need to draw a card, including your opening hand.
Of course it massively changes the game. Now, randomness is a tiny factor, and decks will be truly shining at their best. It also makes existing cards totally useless, but the same could be said about new concepts (e.g Morph and Illusionary Mask).
Sometimes Magic feels like poker: you have to guess what the opponent has, and decide what to do based on this. Make it more like chess, where you know what the opponent has. Welcome! Per "Standard Main Forum- What Belongs Here", these interesting ideas don't belong here. Moving to Magic General. -hoser2
My casual kitchen table group just has a rule we call futuresight. We look at the top 3 cards to decide to keep or not. We can't rearrange them. On top of that, there's free mulligans.
A hand that is a mulligan happens regularly, but not crazy often.
Theres a bunch of completely unplayable hands, like 0 lands or 7 lands.
Anything else can be mitigated by building your deck before you even draw the cards at all.
Some decks work with 2 lands, others need more and some decks can mulligan better than others.
Especially combo decks just need specific cards and sometimes just need to find the one card to start the combo.
Any other deck will have an "average" draw and curving out is always strong to hit the sweet spot in which you can fully use all your resources.
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The big deal is, even with the mulligan to 5 you can win a game of magic, especially if all that counts is to find your trump card that decides a matchup.
If decks are build with lots of 1for1 trades in mind, like point removal, mulligans hit you much harder, compared to a deck that might just have a mass removal to clear the board.
Magic simply gets more hostile to the later and enforces the "interaction" of trading a lot of 1for1 , and stuff like planeswalkers that provide incremental advantage over time further boost the issue that a player will be tremendously punished if they ever fall behind.
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You can fundamentally change the game and remove mana entirely, but that simply removes the aspect of the game to build a proper deck in the first place and shifts the focus on maximizing synergy of non-lands.
A lot of magic includes lands to build a functional deck. If your lands work in tandem with your deck and further boost your cards, its a big upside, compared to decks that want to maximize card power and need more colors to do so, which then means more lands that enter tapped etc. you have to keep all of that in mind.
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Simply said, if your "mono red" deck mulligans to 4 and you play a game in which you often 2for1 yourself to kill a creature and your card quality is just abysmal bad, your deck is simply terrible at mulligans (the red god somewhat reduces the issue, as a mulligan to 6 can ironically be a "faster" hand and enable the god earlier).
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Sometimes Magic feels like poker: you have to guess what the opponent has, and decide what to do based on this. Make it more like chess, where you know what the opponent has.
Well magic should be more like poker.
If you want to play a game with full information and no randomness at all, magic clearly isnt the game you are looking for.
If you always knew what your opponent has, reactive cards would be much worse, as the opponent simply knew to play around whatever you have.
The fact that you have to bluff and assume some especially nasty cards is what makes Magic work in the first place.
Of course your opponent might have the mass removal, so maybe you dont play more and more creatures, but maybe they dont, or even more ironic, they 1st dont have it, but because you dont play all your creatures, they get the 1 extra turn that makes them draw it.
This is in the end what makes magic such a good game, as no matter how you plan, you have to work with uncertainty and you have to take risks.
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Some of the best games of magic involve terrible mulligans and bad draws.
In constructed the powerlevel of individual cards is so high, that failing to curve out will have a tremendous impact on the game and even might be unrecoverable as you are just outright dead on the spot. This is more an issue of the format than it is in magic itself.
The weaker the format, the easier you can struggle for some turns and the opponent will not directly overwhelm you.
This comes down to even simplistic stats of creatures. If a 2 drop has already 3 power, they will win with that alone in 7 turns, while a 2 power creature would take 10 turns. This becomes an even bigger issue if they put down 2 creatures with 3 power, your mulligan hand might be dead already, as these combined 6 power will kill you very quickly (and right now, creatures become much bigger and "snowball" mechanics are printed, that further punish players that do not have an ideal hand).
In Limited you have plenty of situations where a player does not draw a removal against a bomb and it turns a game around that would otherwise be unwinnable.
Some hands do not draw the 3rd/4th land they need and have to adapt to fish for enough time to find it.
Simply said, struggling has its merits.
Its only a bad experience if one hand is much stronger than the other.
Cards like Timely Reinforcements are great combeback cards. If you fall behind, they provide you can advantage, perfect to mitigate the problems of mulligans.
Sadly, magic uses such mechanics way less often than snowball curve out and punish the opponent (Werewolf transform triggers are a good example of a terrible mechanic, as it punishes a player even more for being unable to cast a spell, which is just overkill).
Mechanics like scry and cycling help to smooth a draw, especially land-cycling is a great mechanic to ensure you actually get lands instead of drawing unplayable cards.
I'd say the only real randomness problem is mana screw in limited. Unlike constructed, limited decks generally don't have the luxury of high synergy or efficiency that can get you back into the game when behind. Nor do they have as good of mana. Mulligans help, but they run into the problem that a N-1 card hand has on average fewer lands than an N-card hand, as well as that card advantage means more in limited. Even a mull to 5 is often disastrous, as your lack of cards will likely either get you stuck on lands or out of gas.
I liked the idea of the mulligan rule where you draw 7 each time you mulligan, but once you decide to keep, you shuffle a card from your hand back into your deck for each time you mulliganed. This means you always see 7 cards to find those 3 lands which are really essential in an opening hand in limited, while still having a downside to mulling.
On a different note, what are people's thoughts on the idea that if both players mulligan, they both go up to 7 instead of both going to 6?
On a different note, what are people's thoughts on the idea that if both players mulligan, they both go up to 7 instead of both going to 6?
Players can essentially do this already. If both players agree, they can call the game a draw, and move to the "next" game where they draw 7 again. It can potentially affect tiebreakers, but for most people in most tournaments, that doesn't really matter.
Both of your suggestions lead to abusive combo decks.
Now, randomness is a tiny factor, and decks will be truly shining at their best.
The more you remove luck, the more it becomes important. With your suggestions, decks will win either because it was a good matchup (which is determined by luck) or who goes first (which is luck).
Make it more like chess, where you know what the opponent has.
Except that will turn off newbie players with small card pools as they are invariably defeated. Having a bit of luck means the player with a smaller wallet still has a chance of winning. Likewise, someone with a lot of disaposable cash can still lose.
Winning against an opponent who's mana-screwed the whole game feels empty. And getting beat when you're mana flooded is no more fun.
You could argue that the Pro Tour is usually decided by luck - sometimes, one deck is clearly above others, most of the time, there's a balance in the format. Sam Black had to mulligan down to 4, Pardee had a ~decent hand but no board presence whatsoever in the first 4 turns, and it was still a massacre.
Idea #1: For openeing hand, keep 7 out the top 15, then shuffle the rest. Scry X during your draw step (X=2 or 3 - i.e you get a free Sylvan Library, without the ability to PsiBlast yourself to get more cards), and reveal the card you're drawing every turn (ok maybe not, at that point counterspell would be dead... which may not be a bad thing after all)
Idea #2: make distinct piles of cards: 1 pile for lands, 1 pile for non-lands. Draw from whichever pile you want any time you would need to draw a card, including your opening hand.
Of course it massively changes the game. Now, randomness is a tiny factor, and decks will be truly shining at their best. It also makes existing cards totally useless, but the same could be said about new concepts (e.g Morph and Illusionary Mask).
Sometimes Magic feels like poker: you have to guess what the opponent has, and decide what to do based on this. Make it more like chess, where you know what the opponent has.
Welcome! Per "Standard Main Forum- What Belongs Here", these interesting ideas don't belong here. Moving to Magic General. -hoser2
Theres a bunch of completely unplayable hands, like 0 lands or 7 lands.
Anything else can be mitigated by building your deck before you even draw the cards at all.
Some decks work with 2 lands, others need more and some decks can mulligan better than others.
Especially combo decks just need specific cards and sometimes just need to find the one card to start the combo.
Any other deck will have an "average" draw and curving out is always strong to hit the sweet spot in which you can fully use all your resources.
----
The big deal is, even with the mulligan to 5 you can win a game of magic, especially if all that counts is to find your trump card that decides a matchup.
If decks are build with lots of 1for1 trades in mind, like point removal, mulligans hit you much harder, compared to a deck that might just have a mass removal to clear the board.
Magic simply gets more hostile to the later and enforces the "interaction" of trading a lot of 1for1 , and stuff like planeswalkers that provide incremental advantage over time further boost the issue that a player will be tremendously punished if they ever fall behind.
----
You can fundamentally change the game and remove mana entirely, but that simply removes the aspect of the game to build a proper deck in the first place and shifts the focus on maximizing synergy of non-lands.
A lot of magic includes lands to build a functional deck. If your lands work in tandem with your deck and further boost your cards, its a big upside, compared to decks that want to maximize card power and need more colors to do so, which then means more lands that enter tapped etc. you have to keep all of that in mind.
----
Simply said, if your "mono red" deck mulligans to 4 and you play a game in which you often 2for1 yourself to kill a creature and your card quality is just abysmal bad, your deck is simply terrible at mulligans (the red god somewhat reduces the issue, as a mulligan to 6 can ironically be a "faster" hand and enable the god earlier).
----
Well magic should be more like poker.
If you want to play a game with full information and no randomness at all, magic clearly isnt the game you are looking for.
If you always knew what your opponent has, reactive cards would be much worse, as the opponent simply knew to play around whatever you have.
The fact that you have to bluff and assume some especially nasty cards is what makes Magic work in the first place.
Of course your opponent might have the mass removal, so maybe you dont play more and more creatures, but maybe they dont, or even more ironic, they 1st dont have it, but because you dont play all your creatures, they get the 1 extra turn that makes them draw it.
This is in the end what makes magic such a good game, as no matter how you plan, you have to work with uncertainty and you have to take risks.
----
Some of the best games of magic involve terrible mulligans and bad draws.
In constructed the powerlevel of individual cards is so high, that failing to curve out will have a tremendous impact on the game and even might be unrecoverable as you are just outright dead on the spot. This is more an issue of the format than it is in magic itself.
The weaker the format, the easier you can struggle for some turns and the opponent will not directly overwhelm you.
This comes down to even simplistic stats of creatures. If a 2 drop has already 3 power, they will win with that alone in 7 turns, while a 2 power creature would take 10 turns. This becomes an even bigger issue if they put down 2 creatures with 3 power, your mulligan hand might be dead already, as these combined 6 power will kill you very quickly (and right now, creatures become much bigger and "snowball" mechanics are printed, that further punish players that do not have an ideal hand).
In Limited you have plenty of situations where a player does not draw a removal against a bomb and it turns a game around that would otherwise be unwinnable.
Some hands do not draw the 3rd/4th land they need and have to adapt to fish for enough time to find it.
Simply said, struggling has its merits.
Its only a bad experience if one hand is much stronger than the other.
Cards like Timely Reinforcements are great combeback cards. If you fall behind, they provide you can advantage, perfect to mitigate the problems of mulligans.
Sadly, magic uses such mechanics way less often than snowball curve out and punish the opponent (Werewolf transform triggers are a good example of a terrible mechanic, as it punishes a player even more for being unable to cast a spell, which is just overkill).
Mechanics like scry and cycling help to smooth a draw, especially land-cycling is a great mechanic to ensure you actually get lands instead of drawing unplayable cards.
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I liked the idea of the mulligan rule where you draw 7 each time you mulligan, but once you decide to keep, you shuffle a card from your hand back into your deck for each time you mulliganed. This means you always see 7 cards to find those 3 lands which are really essential in an opening hand in limited, while still having a downside to mulling.
On a different note, what are people's thoughts on the idea that if both players mulligan, they both go up to 7 instead of both going to 6?
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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The more you remove luck, the more it becomes important. With your suggestions, decks will win either because it was a good matchup (which is determined by luck) or who goes first (which is luck).
Except that will turn off newbie players with small card pools as they are invariably defeated. Having a bit of luck means the player with a smaller wallet still has a chance of winning. Likewise, someone with a lot of disaposable cash can still lose.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn